Not a woman, not really
by Ophium
Summary: Coda to episode 5.22. Spoilers for that episode. Lisa's pov since the day she met Dean until the last events that unfolded after that. Complete


NOT A WOMAN... NOT REALLY

It was just one of those bars, you know? Not too fancy, not too sleazy. Just a pit stop in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere, just happened to be where I lived at the time.

It was 1998, and everyone was already dreaming about the turn of the century. Me? I dreamed of biker guys and rough looks and having as many thrilling nights as I could before this millennium was over.

I spotted him by the pool table, and at first glance, dismissed him as just one more kid. Tall guy, I gave him that, but the way he was drowning in that leather jacket like he'd just stolen it from daddy's closet... wasn't really my style.

I liked them rough, tough, wild. And preferably, legal.

This kid... he look all of eighteen. Fifteen, with the jacket.

Of course, back then, I couldn't really get on any high horse about age. The guy who ran the bar didn't give a crap about it and, technically, even though owner of a fake ID of my own, I was two months away from twenty-one. The fact that I'd been a regular there since before I was eighteen... that was just a technicality, really.

And then the fight broke out.

It wasn't like that bar didn't had its fair share of broken chairs and smashed glasses and punched faces. It had. At least one every week. More, on football season.

But that fight was what made me look at the 'kid' twice.

The biker guys he was playing pool with didn't look very pleased at the way their bets were going –straight into the kid's pocket- and decided to make a point of their displeasure by swinging a pool stick at him.

It was a thing if beauty to see. Usually drunken brawls are all about grunting and shoving and mostly calling their mothers' every name in the book. Not this one though.

The pool stick cut through the air like a chainsaw, heading straight towards the kid's chest, but it never hit him. In the same continuous and fluid movement, I saw that scrawny boy bend backwards, the stick missing him by inches.

Expecting that to have been a lucky break, both me and the group of bikers invested on beating the crap out of that kid, were surprised to see that he wasn't over. Instead of making a run for the door, the kid kept on bending backwards at the waist, until his hands touched the ground and proceeded to kick the stick out of the goon's hand, doing a complete 360 and landing like a pro on his feet. The grin on his face then...

It told me that this wasn't the first time that something like this had happened to him.

And it told me that he was the one I'd been taking home that night.

-_-_-_-_oooo-_-_-_-_-

It sounds kind of cliché, but Dean Winchester was truly the best lay of my life. We had the most... bendy, illegal, gone-to-heaven-and-back, weekend that any woman can dream of.

And after that... I never saw him again.

Ben was born eight months after that. Premature kid, eager to start his life. I couldn't give him anything less that that. My life.

Everything changed after that.

I quit my adventurous night outs, stopped looking for a thrill in between the sheets and started to enjoy other kind of thrills. The 'firsts' thrills.

The first kick.

The first glimpse in a black and white grainy screen.

The first cry.

The first smile.

The first giggle.

The first step.

The first time that Ben asked who his father was, I told him the truth. He was only seven, but old enough to understand something that had always been clear in our home: we were a different family, but a family nonetheless.

So, I told him that his father was a man I'd met one night, that had made me happy for a couple of hours and that that didn't make him part of our family anymore than the guy at the market who sold us a lottery ticket. That one nightstand had been my lottery ticket and Ben... Ben was the best prize I could ever dreamt of.

True answer to that? I had no idea. I had made and remade all the math I could squeeze out of the matter, but try as I did, I couldn't point fingers at any of the guys that I'd slept in the period of time Ben was conceived. It had been one wild month, I can admit to that much.

Deep down, I kept hoping that Ben himself would give me some sort of clue. A cleft in his chin; a particular eye or hair color; something... but the kid took out after me, and that was all the sign I needed to let the matter die.

-_-_-_-_oooo-_-_-_-_-

Dean came knocking on my door nine years after that weekend. I couldn't decide if it was all one hell of a coincidence or if fate was trying to tell me something.

Just when Ben had started to become more insistent about knowing whom his father was. That's when Dean comes knocking on my door.

For years, Dean had stopped being 'just a guy' and had started growing into a concept. I guess that's what you get when you stop being a 'woman' and start being a 'mom'. You turn your last big hurrah! into a concept, where everything is perfect and smells of roses.

He was the one I talked about when the 'mom's' met and talked about the 'good ol'days' of their wild youth. Of course, in this neighborhood, 'wild' was a very relative term so, it goes without saying that the tales of my weekend with 'the Dean' had become sort of legendary and a must-have whenever we opened that second bottle of red wine and dimmed out the lights.

In the light of the day, in my son's birthday party, standing outside my door with a sleazy smile on his full lips, Dean had come crashing down from 'concept' to 'very much real'. And it paled in comparison.

I was pissed at him, I have to admit that. I was having enough trouble keeping Ben's questions at bay, keeping that bubble of happiness that was our little family, from completely rupturing. Ben asks about a father. And one of the possibilities comes knocking at the door.

Someone up there must hate me. It was the only conclusion I could draw.

I was wrong, of course. About the hating part. And if Dean coming back in that exact week, that exact day... if that wasn't divine providence, I didn't know what else it could've been.

Despite the fury at having him waltz in at the worst time ever, despite his meddling in affairs that were not his to be meddling in, he saved Ben's life.

And that was something that I could never thank him enough for. He gave me back my son, my life. And he wanted nothing in return.

Ben loved him, of course. Everyone loved Dean, once they meet him. He is, after all, just as appealing to women as he is for little kids. Like shiny things usually are.

Sometimes, I catch myself wondering if that's because he too is like a little kid.

I offered him everything after that, after he returned Ben to me. A chance to stay, a chance to settle down. A chance to become Ben's father.

He tells me he couldn't stay, but I could see it in his eyes, taste it in his lips, how much he wished he had the choice. His goodbye then felt definitive, felt forever.

-_-_-_-_oooo-_-_-_-_-

Dean's always saying goodbye to me. It's two years later after I last saw him, twelve after we've met and he's saying goodbye again.

The man that came knocking on my door that day was nothing like the kid I met in a bar all those years ago, or the man who saved my son. There was a... weight on his shoulders, a gloominess around him that made him look older than his years; darker than the light I usually associated with Dean Winchester.

I had the distinct impression that he wasn't saying goodbye to me, not really. It was much bigger than that.

He was saying goodbye to life.

And that, more than his words, more than his warnings about how bad things were going to get, even more than the reports I'd seen on TV... that scared the shit out of me.

-_-_-_-_oooo-_-_-_-_-

After that, I thought I was never going to see him again. Everyday, I opened the newspaper and searched for news of Dean Winchester's death. I listened to the TV, waiting for some clue that it had finally happened.

But all I heard about was the storms, and the weird climatic changes, and the riots and the cities that were being wiped off the map for no reason whatsoever. No explanations.

All the newspapers and TV talked about was that everything seemed out of control and if this wasn't the end of the world, they didn't know what else to call it.

I didn't expect them to talk about Dean.

He knew this was going to happen and somewhere out there, he was fighting to stop it. Of that much I was sure.

In a weird way, every bad news that I listened too or read about, gave me hope that Dean was still alive, still fighting.

And then it was over.

Oh, not everyone realized that. In fact, I'm sure very few did. What ever this had been, whatever had caused, it stated as subtle as it ended. Veiled and unclear, like I'd come to realize true evil operated in this world: in the comfort of the dark.

The news reports became less about panic and more about hope; the viral outbreaks and weird diseases stopped making the headlines and became just one more illness; the weather remembered how to properly behave once again.

And deep down, I knew it was over. And I was sure that Dean was dead.

The day the world didn't end, I cried.

-_-_-_-_oooo-_-_-_-_-

The knock on the door was hesitant, faint, like the fist behind it was afraid to touch the wood.

Dean Winchester was the last person I expected to see when I opened that door.

He looked... broken. Lost.

His voice cracked as he shyly asked me if my door was still opened to him, not sure what my answer would be.

Both of us knew that, had I said no then, it would be the last drop. The straw that would finally break the camel's back forever.

I couldn't stand to do that to a stranger in the middle of the street. I certainly couldn't do that to Dean. So I said yes. Always yes.

I didn't asked anything, even though there were so many questions inside me that my head was spinning. I couldn't though. Whatever I had to ask, I knew he wasn't ready to answer yet.

Instead, I did the one thing that I've wanted to do ever since he'd come to say goodbye. I put my hands around him and I hugged him as hard as I could.

Trapped in my arms, I could feel his body tremble. With exhaustion; with pain; with loss.

I remembered trembling like that, like my muscles were trying to vibrate their way out of my body. I trembled like that for hours, until Dean's car pulled up in my drive way and Ben jumped out from the back seat.

I was glad Ben wasn't there that first night, spending it at a friend's slumber party. More than two years had gone by since Ben had last seen Dean, and he still talked about the cool guy with the 'kick-as-'... with the 'kick-butt' car that had taught him how to throw a punch.

Ben would go insane as soon as he laid eyes on Dean, sitting in our leaving room.

And Dean would end up forcing himself to pull the mask on for my son, to pretend that everything was okay so that a twelve year old wouldn't freak out. I was glad he didn't have to.

He cried for hours that first night. I had no idea why or for who his tears were, but I caught myself crying right alongside him. It was a visceral pain, a desolation so utter and complete that it took me a while to recognized it for what it was.

Dean was grieving. My guess was, he was grieving for everything that he'd lived through. For everyone that he'd lost.

It's been twelve years since I took Dean to my bed that first time. Back then, it was all about getting clothes out of way as fast as we could, all about feeling skin on skin and being alive.

Now, there is nothing sexual about the way I take off his boots, help him slip off his clothes and guide him by the hand as he slips into my cotton sheets.

I am not a 'woman' stripping Dean, and he is not a 'man' lying naked in my bed. I am a 'mother' comforting a child and he is an orphan. Crying for the life he's lost.

The end

AN: Much thankiness to Jackfan2, for the lightning fast and efficient beta reading. All remaining mistakes are mine.


End file.
